The first product of self-knowledge is humility, Flannery O'Connor once said. This is how we fight the ego, by really knowing ourselves.
The economics of the internet are exploited to change public perception—and sell product.
So why on earth do you need thanks or recognition for having done the right thing? It’s your job.
So what is scarce and rare? Silence. The ability to deliberately keep yourself out of the conversation and subsist without its validation. Silence is the respite of the confident and the strong.
So what do we own? Just our lives—and not for long.
Outward appearances are deceptive. What’s within them, beneath them, is what matters.
Our perceptions are the thing that we’re in complete control of.
Let others slap each others on the back while you're back in the lab or the gym or pounding the pavement.
La artista del performance Marina Abramovic lo expresa claramente: Si empiezas creyendo que eres grande, tu creatividad morirá.
Just one thing keeps ego around—comfort. Pursuing great work—whether it is in sports or art or business—is often terrifying. Ego soothes that fear. It’s a salve to that insecurity.
It was this intense self-discipline and objectivity that allowed Rockefeller to seize advantage from obstacle after obstacle in his life, during the Civil War, and the panics of 1873, 1907, and 1929....
Is there anything sadder than the immense lengths we’ll go to impress someone? The things we’ll do to earn someone’s approval can seem, when examined in retrospect, like the result of some temporary f...
He says the best way out is always through And I agree to that, or in so far As I can see no way out but through. —ROBERT FROST F
En este sentido, el ego es el enemigo de lo que deseamos y de lo que tenemos. El enemigo de la posibilidad de llegar a dominar un oficio. De la verdadera intuición creativa. De la posibilidad de traba...
Determination, if you think about it, is invincible. Nothing other than death can prevent us from following Churchill’s old acronym: KBO. Keep Buggering On.
Ego is certainly there in many of the greatest and most dizzying tales of success - but it's there in some of the greatest stories of failure and self-implosion as well.
Why should customers do that? Have you actually made it easy for them to spread your product? Is the product even worth talking about?
Our purposes, nothing we’ll experience is likely without potential benefit.
Of all the avenues for curing our negative characteristics, philosophy has existed the longest and helped the most people
Just begin the work. The rest follows.